Fire-Toolz signs to Warp and releases the maximalist Lavender Networks

Fire-Toolz releases Lavender Networks on 8 May via Warp Records, a major label-home moment for Angel Marcloid’s wildly imaginative electronic project. Fire-Toolz has always existed at an unusual intersection: digital chaos, prog complexity, vapor textures, metal-adjacent intensity, jazz fusion, ambient beauty and internet-age humor.

Lavender Networks seems to lean fully into that maximalist identity, with a tracklist that reads like a surreal operating system and guests including Zola Jesus, Brothertiger, Nailah Hunter, Lipsticism, Jennifer Holm and Sling Beam.

Lead single Balam =^..^= Says IPv09082024 Strawberry Head signaled that the album would not smooth itself out for a wider audience, even while the Warp release gives Fire-Toolz a larger platform. That tension is the appeal. Lavender Networks sounds like a record for listeners who want electronic music to feel overloaded, unstable, colorful and emotional all at once.